Free Republic

Distant Holy Grail: China's Consumers Tina Wang, 05.13.09, 1:34 AM ET HONG KONG -- China is showing steady improvement in domestic consumption, as global and domestic companies set their sights and hopes on the world's most populous market. But bolstering the power of its consumers to full potential poses a long-term challenge for China and requires a structural rebalancing of economic growth. China's retail sales continue to grow robustly, in line with market expectations and the year's first-quarter pace. Retail sales for April climbed 14.8% from the same time last year, to 934.3 billion yuan ($137.0 billion), according to the...

Will Asia’s downturn be worse than America’s? Posted by Edward Harrison on 21 December 2008 Published in economy Below is an article that has been syndicated on a number of sites in the Indian press (hat tip Ravin) which challenges the common wisdom that Asia, and particularly China, will weather the downturn better than the U.S. While the articles conclusions are contentious, its analysis bears noting, making those conclusions an outcome to not dismiss. Yves Smith of naked capitalism recently coined the phrase Alpha Creditor to denote the country with the highest net exports and largest current account surplus. In...